


Can You Be My Nightingale?

by LLReid



Category: Bloodbound (Visual Novels)
Genre: Angst and Tragedy, Angst with a Happy Ending, Comfort/Angst, F/F, Implied/Referenced Abuse, LGBTQ Character of Color, LGBTQ Female Character, Past Abuse, Psychic Abilities, Psychic Violence, REQUEST!!, Vampires, first I love you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:20:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26453269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LLReid/pseuds/LLReid
Summary: Inspired by; Nightingale by Demi Lovato.~~~~~“Kamilah, please look at me,” Anastasia said softly as she sat down on the arm of the chair Kamilah was sitting in. Everyone else was dead asleep as Adrian’s jet surged towards Japan, exhausted down to their bones after their night at the bacchanalia. Kamilah, however, had positioned herself as far from everyone as she possibly could and was sitting with her head rested in one hand and a half empty bottle of whiskey in the other — the empty bottle of Smirnoff rested on the seat next to her gave away that she’d been drinking for quite a while. Sometimes the sort of solitude she imposed on herself could be blinding.“I’m no different than he is,” the ancient vampire muttered, more to herself than to her. She didn’t meet her eyes, and that alone told Anastasia all she needed to know about how Rheya’s mind control had fucked up her mental state. Eye contact wasn’t something that intimidated Kamilah Sayeed, she just didn’t want her to see the tears that were swimming there. “I hurt you. My hands were around your neck—“
Relationships: Kamilah Sayeed/Anastasia Sayeed, Kamilah Sayeed/Anastasia Swann, Kamilah Sayeed/Main Character (Bloodbound)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 75





	Can You Be My Nightingale?

**Author's Note:**

> PROMPT: since PB never gave us the angst and fluff stuff we wanted after that scene in BB3 where Kamilah tried to strangle MC becoz of Rheya so can you maybe write something about that

Anastasia kept her footsteps light as she wandered towards Kamilah, drawn by the same inexorable compulsion that led moths to dance with flames. She felt like she’d gained several lifetimes' worth of reason, cold machinations, and, ultimately, emptiness, in the past few days since she’d begun her new life as a vampire. Perhaps the moths knew what she hadn’t truly allowed herself to think about, that the joy of the flame was worth the price of destruction.

“Kamilah?”

“Mm?”

“Kamilah, please look at me,” Anastasia said softly as she sat down on the arm of the chair Kamilah was sitting in. Everyone else was dead asleep as Adrian’s jet surged towards Japan, exhausted down to their bones after their night at the bacchanalia. Kamilah, however, had positioned herself as far from everyone as she possibly could and was sitting with her head rested in one hand and a half empty bottle of whiskey in the other — the empty bottle of Smirnoff rested on the seat next to her gave away that she’d been drinking for quite a while. Sometimes the sort of solitude she imposed on herself could be blinding.

“I’m no different than he is,” the ancient vampire muttered, more to herself than to her. She didn’t meet her eyes, and that alone told Anastasia all she needed to know about how Rheya’s mind control had fucked up her mental state. Eye contact wasn’t something that intimidated Kamilah Sayeed, she just didn’t want her to see the tears that were swimming there. “I hurt you. My hands were around your neck—“

The Bloodkeeper moved so that she was sitting on her lap and slipped her hand beneath her chin and gently turned her face so that she could hold her gaze. She held onto her face, making sure she couldn’t break eye contact, couldn’t look away. She was so angry with herself that her eyes were a burning shade of crimson. It was so intimate, the way her stare felt like she was stripping her bare. But it was Kamilah. This woman could peer into her soul at any time. She’d only see her own soul there. A home for her ancient heart. 

“I don't think I'll ever be able to tell you how sorry I am,” Kamilah said before Anastasia could even open her mouth, “but it doesn't mean I won't try, because you, Annie, you deserve a lifetime of servitude. Eons of groveling. Even then, I don’t think I can show enough, do enough to let you see. And that's okay. You have every right to hate me for this lifetime and many others. You have every right to never see me again. To spit on my grave—“

“Kami, please stop,” she interjected. Life didn’t stop at what people believed would be happily-ever-after. And as far ahead in the future as you might be, the past was never far behind. You just had to look over your shoulder — or into the eyes of one who was still as haunted by it as Kamilah was. “You are not to blame for what Rheya forced you to do. You would never hurt me—“

“But I did hurt you!,” Kamilah snapped, almost on the verge of tears. “I almost killed you. I’ve just got you back and I— One minute we were a memory in the making, and in the next we were just a memory. Something to haunt me for the rest of my life... and I almost put myself in that position again— I almost put you in a position where you would be murdered again with my own two hands. How can you even look at me? I am just like Gaius— Worse, even.”

“You're not a bad person," she said carefully, looking into her shining, desperate eyes. “The world is bad and we’re all just trying to survive in it. I wish you could see what I see in you. What the others see in you.”

“How can you say that? I physically attacked you tonight... I know how it feels to be on your end. I’ve been on your end too many times to not know exactly how you must’ve felt when I was strangling you like that. How can you possibly think I’m a good person after that?”

“Because you are my Kami, and who you are now and who you think you should be because of things that happened in your past are two very different women,” she soothed, caressing her cheek. “I might not know the ins and outs of everything he put you through but I do know that there is one major difference between what happened tonight and the abusive situation he had you trapped in for two thousand years.”

“Enlighten me to what that is.” Kamilah took a long sip out of her alcohol and when she looked back at her, she was more vulnerable than Anastasia had ever seen her. Forever fighting a battle she would never win on her own. Terrified to actually be asking someone else for help, to be showing her that she wasn’t okay. When she spoke again, her voice was so fragile a butterfly wouldn’t have heard her. “Please.”

“He had a choice to treat you the way he did, and he chose to hurt you repeatedly in a hundred different ways. Tonight, a powerful psychic vampire invaded your mind without your consent and ordered you to kill me. You did not have a choice. You are not an abuser. I am not afraid of you. You are just as much one of Rheya’s victims as I am in this situation.” 

“But I still— If you hadn’t done whatever it was that you did to break her hold on us, you would be dead right now. I would’ve killed you.” 

“But you didn’t. I’m fine, sweetheart. Really.”

Kamilah sighed and rubbed at her eyes with a trembling hand, “I need you to promise me something.”

“Anything.”

“If she gets into my mind again and it looks like I am going to hurt you, I need you to kill me before I can—“

“Kamilah—“

“Promise me. I have never asked you for anything, Annie, but right now I am not only asking you... I am begging you. I have never begged for anything in my whole life.” She looked like she felt like she was choking. Her words came out hoarsely as she gasped for air, as she allowed herself to feel. “It hurts more than I know what to do with. I can’t handle this. I can’t. Please. Don’t ever let me hurt you.”

Anastasia gaped at her, tears blurring her vision as she drew her into her embrace. She was so, so damn tired. It wasn’t necessarily of this life that she’d been given — but she wasn’t even trying to radiate kindness anymore. She was well past that. She was screwed up. Undead. Angry. So damn angry. She wanted to take that anger out on Rheya for making the strongest woman she’d ever met crumble like this. She wanted to rip and tear and scream at what Kamilah had endured and what she’d become when Rheya had entered her mind.

Maybe that’s how she’d managed to hurt both Rheya and Gaius in the span of only one hour. People never showed their true colours when everything was fine. It was when everything went to shit that you saw what a person was really made of. She was anger reborn and frustration justified. She was brutal hate and cold, dead winter. She was turning, tumbling in despair and there was no light, no warmth, no world, and no heart when she accessed those abilities that had decided to now suddenly come to light. What was the point of rising from the ashes only to have them rain on you from above?

“I promise I won’t let it get to that point—“

“I know you’ll do everything you can to stop it,” Kamilah interjected, “but if it does come to that... you have to know that I am no longer there and you have to treat me like you would any other enemy. You kill me to save yourself, do you understand me? You’ve died once before so that I may live... don’t sacrifice yourself again in order to save me. Please.”

This living goddess had become her home, and was making her weak, and for the first time ever, Anastasia actually had something to lose.

Her.

She couldn’t lose her.

But what would she do if she couldn’t keep her?

She didn’t know what to do.

Everyone had the chance to become dangerous. If the right weather patterns were created, if the right feelings were invoked... feelings of injustice. Jealousy. Feelings of being owed something they believed they had a right to have. To... collect, in Rheya’s case. Everyone had it in them to become a danger, either to others or to themselves— and it was just unfortunate that someone who was so dangerous had the ability to weaponise other people the way that Rheya had that night. It was only a matter if the right clouds were brewing. Certain clouds would create a perfect storm.

Fight with honour, fight with discipline, fight with vengeance. That was what Kamilah had drilled into her time and again. The mere idea of using that mantra against her was a fate worse than death in her mind. When did living become the wrong choice and death the right one? When did having someone you trust take your life become wiser than letting someone else destroy it? She didn’t think she’d even be capable of taking the life of the woman she loved, but she nodded and whispered, “I promise.”

“Use this wisely — if you need to.” Taking one of her daggers and pressing it into her hands, she murmured, “But I’ll never knowingly give you a reason to use it on me.”

She cleared her throat, but even so her words were quiet, “Thank you... but you know I trust you.” She put her hand on top of hers and squeezed. “And you’ve got me.”

Kamilah rolled her eyes and let out a soft huff of air.

“No,” she told her, her voice rough. She blinked at her in surprise. “I mean you really have me. If you’ll have me.”

“Of course I’ll have you... but I’ve hurt you enough,” Kamilah countered softly, rubbing her sides over the purple jewel toned cocktail dress Lily and picked out for her. She drew her closer to her and hugged her tighter. Everyone who saw Kamilah likened her to a lioness; effortlessly fearsome and majestic and proud and strong. Anastasia hugged that lioness with all her might. It felt so good to hold something, and it felt like the lioness was holding her back, silently thanking her for the rescue. 

“Kami...”

“How are we going to get through this?,” Kamilah asked, her voice quiet against the roar of the downpour against the outside of the jet. “All the days ahead of us?”

“One sunset at a time,” she told her as she moved, turning and straddling her, her thighs outside her rock hard ones. Atop her, facing her, was exactly where she wanted to be. “One sunset at a time, and with me by your side. It’s okay to need me. I need you. I need you more than I can possibly tell you. There’s no shame in it. Okay?”

“Okay.” Kamilah’s chin lifted, and her eyes darkened. Intensity, so sharp it almost hurt to see, swirled there. In fact, sometimes she looked at her in this way she couldn’t really describe but it did things to her heart. It warmed her up, from head to toe and her chest was the epicentre. She just wanted to bottle that look and hold onto forever, open it on a cold, foggy day and feel bright and alive all over again. 

She gave her a gentle kiss, almost dazed as she turned the blade over in her palm. Kamilah had literally hundreds of daggers but this one was one of the ones she carried with her on a daily basis — so she knew it was battle tested and much older than she was. Her eyes fluttered closed and memories of dried blood, spattered like a Jackson Pollock canvas, flooded behind her eyelids. She saw marble floors that were streaked with it, handprints smearing the gleaming white surfaces. And the bodies. Dozens of bodies. People she’d seen every day since finding her way to the centre of vampire society, people whom she’d laughed with and cried with and come to like, were lying at odd angles, their bodies pale and cold and crumbling to ash at Rheya’s feet, their eyes staring like rows of dolls in a shop window.

“Annie... are you alright?,” Kamilah whispered in her ear, drawing her out of her trance.

“I see dead people,” she laughed weakly. Of course she was trying to joke about things. What else was one to do when they found themselves at the centre of a vampire war that put the whole Twilight Saga to shame? Whoever returned from war in one piece, anyway? Body or mind? So you may as well joke about it, she rationalised. “Somehow I don’t think calling my psychiatrist and telling her my meds need an adjustment is going to fix this one, though.”

“Just because no one else can see what you do, doesn’t make your visions any less real. I believe you.”

Everyone had ghosts that followed them throughout their lives. Ghosts of the past they wish they'd left behind, ghosts of love they once turned down, ghosts of regret and ghosts of loss. Ghosts of guilt. They all had them. Anastasia certainly did, but unlike most people she couldn’t simply forget them or block out the memories. She bore her own and she bore other people’s, and she had no other option but to simply find a way to cope with these newfound abilities. As scary as it was she felt like she was living her life instead of just getting by. She was doing something important, being somebody important. Before this… she was just going through the motions. Now she was the motion — and could finally understand The Last Airbender series on a deeper level than her twelve year old self could ever have imagined possible... so it wasn’t all terrible. Only mostly terrible.

Kamilah seemed to sense her unease, as she held her tighter and pressed her brow against hers. They gazed at each other for what seemed like ages, so lost but so found. They were both exhausted. Emotionally and physically exhausted. But her one consolation was that this woman was everything she’d been looking her whole life for and she was right in front of her through all of this. She might not have found the courage to say those three words to her yet — perhaps that was the just another Kazakh cultural quirk, that she felt genuinely anxious about being the one to say it first — but her heart, her everything, it belonged solely to Kamilah.

Before her Turning, she had wondered if she was falling in love with her. She had known from the moment she saw her, she was, but had pretended she was not. She couldn’t pretend any longer. She didn’t want to pretend any longer... but she’d never actually been the first one to make that sort of confession before. Love wasn’t a choice. She couldn’t control how she had grown to feel about her any more than she could control the sun in the sky. But what she could do was control what she did with those feelings. How strange it was, you could fall in love in a second because the heart had no regard for time, but it felt like it was slow and insidious, slinking through you like ink through water, until it permeated every inch of your soul.

There had been many risks that were worth taking and many times that they had fallen since they met, but they always fell together. Their journey had never been easy. The only thing that was easy in all of this was her love for her. It was pure, it was simple, and it was truer than anything she’d ever felt.

“How do you do that?,” Kamilah murmured. 

“Do what?”

“I came over here to drink my sorrows away as soon as you’d fallen asleep, and you— you make me see the good in myself and the good in everything on this damn earth. You chase my ghosts away, and…” she cleared her throat, and to Anastasia’s surprise, she saw her eyes were watering. “And you bring me peace. I can’t thank you enough for being in my life. Through everything — the good and the bad, the batshit crazy and the sane, the scary and the sexy.”

“Especially the sexy,” she smirked.

“Indeed,” Kamilah chuckled. “You have shaken me to my very soul, rattled the bars around my heart, and I am yours, Annie. Everything has a new meaning with you.”

She slowly kissed her cheek and moved so that her mouth was right at her ear. “What is love? In English.”

Kamilah raised her brows. “Love, in English, is love?”

“Do you remember what I told you it is in Russian?”

Kamilah seemed like she was so enthralled by her hypnotic eyes, she could barely remember. “Lyublyu?”

She was correct but Anastasia shook her head ever so slightly and whispered, “Love in Russian is you. Ya lyublyu tyebya fsyem syertsem.”

“You love me?,” Kamilah whispered, the emotions rising up her throat, choking her.

“Of course I love you. I’ve only loved you. There was no before or in-between for me,” she said softly as she held onto her hand. “All in. I’ve always been all in with you.”

The ancient vampire’s eyes lit up and she seemed genuinely driven speechless for a good few seconds. And the entire world seemed to pause with Anastasia’s breath.

“Ya tozhe tyebya lyublyu. Ya lyublyu tyebya fsyei dushoj,” Kamilah whispered, brushing her bottom lip lightly with her thumb. “I have never, ever, felt this way about someone in my entire life. You ran toward me. You threw yourself into my darkness and you showed me the stars that I never knew were there. You were never afraid of what was in me, you wanted to see it all, you wanted to be there for me in every way that you could.” She lowered her face, eyes focused intently on her lips. “I’m losing myself in you. Every day. And it’s the most wonderful, terrifying feeling in the world. If I’m being honest here, you’re starting to drive me a bit mad in my affections for you. I don’t know if I will ever be of right mind again but I can’t bring myself to care — that is how much I love you, that is how much I’ve always loved you.”

Kamilah drew her into a kiss, it felt like she wanted to be consumed by her. The Bloodkeeper’s lips parted, her tongue threaded with Kamilah’s and they wordlessly agreed they would fight for each other. They would chase each other. They would love one another. They would burn for one another — until there was nothing else left. Just Kamilah’s ancient heart and hers.

“I never imagined in a million years that someone could see me the way that you see me and make me feel that I’m worth something,” Anastasia whispered, her lips brushing against hers with every word. “And I hope, beyond all hopes, that I can keep doing the same for you.”

“You mean that?,” Kamilah whispered.

She couldn’t help the lovesick puppy smile that she just knew was spreading across her face. “I mean it. I mean it with every beat of my badass immortal heart.”

“A savage heart,” she smirked. As usual, she skirted the line between sexy as hell and being absolutely adorable. “A warrior heart.”

“A hearts that’s all yours.” She kissed the tip of her nose. It soothed her to treat her so gently after seeing her so vulnerable, coating her heart, making her forget everything she knew. Yes, she was drowning again, but this time for the right reasons. There was no better reason than love. “You’re mine as much as I’m yours. And I swear nothing, nothing, is ever going to change that for us. You will always belong in my heart. It’s your home.”

“You are my key,” Kamilah murmured, her voice low and husky. “The key to becoming a better woman. You’re the one who is worth it.”

Whilst she sat there in her arms, she realised she didn’t know what the future held. But she knew it held Kamilah. And that was more than good enough for her. That was everything. She could kiss her for a thousand days and it still wouldn’t be enough. She could gaze at her for a million days and it wouldn’t be enough. She could touch her, taste her, be so deep inside her that she was almost fused to her skin, do this forever and it still wouldn’t be enough. Forever with Kamilah wouldn’t be nearly enough... but it seemed like a good place to start.

The road ahead only twisted and turned. It would be forever uphill, forever testing them until they reached its end. They would be forever surrounded by ash. This was them. This was the edge of danger. This was a love that had changed everything for everyone. But together they were fire. And fire rose. Fire created the ashes. It rose above them. They’d rise with whatever was thrown their way.

~ fin.


End file.
